


Snow

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hallucinations, Horror, Reality Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: Dick + fear toxin





	Snow

One day, Dick thought, he was going to wake up without his first thought being “ _ow_.”

Not today. One arm was twisted painfully underneath him, and his shoulder throbbed from hitting the floor. Floor? Yes, he was lying on the floor somewhere dark while green-tinted mist hovered in the air above him.

Fear gas. That part was obvious— slightly more obvious because the unconscious form of Jonathan Crane lay on the floor across from him. Dick did remember their fight, but nothing after that. They had both used gas attacks: knock-out gas on Dick’s part, fear gas on Crane’s. The two combined and carried, Dick figured. Crane didn’t appear to be awake yet.

Dick sat up slowly, checking the room for anything that looked like a fear toxin-induced hallucination. The room was empty, just one of Crane’s standard labs. It looked creepy, but normal. Besides that, there was only the Scarecrow costume itself— again, standard. Nothing there. Maybe the fear toxin’s effect had already worn off.

His arm still felt like it was twisted underneath him. Dick blinked and found himself back on the floor, like he had never moved in the first place—shoulder against the stone and arm beneath him. He sat up a second time, stood up, and leaned against the wall. One blink and he was back on the ground.

Fear toxin, he thought. It hadn’t worn off. Maybe the effects were only starting, or maybe he’d been imagining the whole room the entire time. He had definitely imagined moving. Dick pushed down the rush of panic that accompanied that particular realization and tried to focus on sitting up instead.

He hated this part.

Dick sat up for a third time, slowly, carefully, concentrating on the feeling of stone beneath his fingers, each muscle in his arm as he pushed himself upward, and the movement of his chest with his breath. In and out, in and out. Real? He wasn’t sure. His arm didn’t hurt anymore. Dick closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. Still sitting. It was real.

Probably.

Behind him, a voice whispered his name. Dick spun around to look, but there was no one there— just an empty stone wall and the fear toxin still swirling around the room. The voice called again, this time from below him: his name repeated over and over, sing-song, drawn out for emphasis. _Diiiiiiick. Dick? Diiiiiiiii-ick_ …

Not real. Nothing there. Dick stood up shakily, one hand on the wall. He needed to grab Crane and get them both out of this room and into the air outside. Crane still wasn’t moving.

_Dick_! the voice screamed. Dick heard it echo in his head, followed by a sound he would recognize until the day he died: a wire snapping above him.

Dick didn’t look up. He didn’t need to. It wasn’t real. Hearing it _hurt_ , it was like getting punched in the chest, but he knew— not real. It wasn’t real. He could handle that, could handle anything as long as he knew for sure what was real and what wasn’t. When that line blurred…

Terrified. Dick hated it, had always hated losing himself, losing his ability to know and to trust what he saw, what he heard, what he felt around him. Not knowing was the ultimate loss of control, and Dick hated it. He was afraid of it.

He was terrified.

A gust of wind in the empty room blew the cloud of toxin aside and replaced it with green tinted snow falling sideways. That had to be false, didn’t it? There was nowhere for the wind to come in. Spiders swarmed on the floor around him. They couldn’t be real. He would have noticed before. The voice called his name again, this time from across the room. There was no one there— unless his eyes were lying? Maybe he was hallucinating, and there was someone calling him, but he couldn’t see them through the illusion.

No. There was no one there except Crane, still lying on the ground. As Dick watched, Crane began to move. He melted into a black, dripping mass that oozed across the floor towards Dick, gaining speed as it went. Dick didn’t move away. That wasn’t real either. Crane was still Crane, and he was lying motionless on the floor. There was nothing to be afraid of.

At least, that was what Dick thought until something heavy hit him in the head. He stumbled backwards and narrowly avoided falling.

Shit. Real. Crane may not be a black cloud monster, but he was definitely awake and trying his best to kill Dick. Dick’s head throbbed. Flashing lights blocked his vision, then everything turned into gray static. He couldn’t see anything at all, but he could hear Crane panting as he lunged towards Dick again.

The static began to clear as Dick threw himself sideways, narrowly avoiding another blow to the head. The ooze monster grew a face wearing Scarecrow’s mask— burlap and rope with a broken gas mask. Dick kicked it as he came into range. The face fell on the ground, and its body oozed into the stone, leaving a decapitated head bouncing on the floor. It opened it’s mouth and screamed.

Should he grab the head and go? The rest of Crane had to be there with it, right? He hadn’t really dissolved. Crane couldn’t do that. Dick froze as he realized there was someone who could. Had he been fighting Clayface, not Scarecrow, this entire time?

No. No, Clayface was in Arkham. Dick had been looking for Scarecrow for days before he found him. Clayface had nothing to do with this. Dick looked down and found that his hands were shaking. The whole room was shaking. The head on the floor vanished. The snow kept falling. Spiders crawled onto Dick’s legs and up his body. They felt intimately, horribly real. Maybe they were.

No! They weren’t! He was hallucinating, and it wasn’t real, and he had to remember that. He had to get out while he was still standing, before Crane reappeared and landed another blow. Across the room, the stone wall began to crack and fall away in pieces, shaken apart.

Dick stumbled towards the opening. He was getting desperate to leave. As he went, Scarecrow’s weight tackled him from behind. They both crashed forward and into a wall that hadn’t really fallen apart. Dick supposed he’d imagined that too.

On the other hand, he could see Crane again, and that was an opportunity. Scarecrow held a section of pipe that he swung at Dick. Dick knocked it away with an escrima, grabbed Crane’s exposed wrist, and pulled him through the doorway, out of the green snow. They both crashed into a dim hallway, through that, and out into the night air. As soon as Dick let go of his wrist, Crane fled into the darkness.

Dick let him. He was in no condition to pursue. Around him, specks of white fell from the sky and onto his face.

Snow.

Real?


End file.
